The hormone that makes you prefer sex to eating and what makes you choose fatty foods: how they work – time.news

2023-06-14 09:05:31

Of Elena Meli

All molecules that influence weight, mood, pleasure control. How they act and how to influence their mechanisms

Eat or reproduce? In hungry mice, when stimulated with the hormone leptin, the desire for food takes a back seat and you prefer sex: one proved it research of the University of Cologne in Germanythat this appetite-suppressing hormone is so potent that it makes mating preferable to bingeing when mice have moderate appetites. If, on the other hand, the restriction of food is rigid and prolonged, there is no leptin that holds and eating comes before everything else.

Hunger hormones and satiety

The leptin produced by adipose tissue, so that when there is sufficient body fat there is a good amount of it in circulation and we feel no appetite; in obese people leptin abounds but due to a greater general inflammation of the tissues there is a great resistance to its anti-hunger action. The opposite hormone ghrelin which is produced in the stomach when empty, therefore almost always apart from the few daily hours in which it is involved in digestion, and a powerful stimulus to eat, especially sugars. Unlike leptin, ghrelin and other appetite regulators are almost perpetually expressed because evolution has favored responses aimed at accumulating energy and nutrients to overcome famines; we can silence them only with a correct food style. To regulate the desire for food there is then theinsulin, a fundamental hormone that controls the income and management of glucose, the first fuel of the body and above all of the brain, which cannot stock up on it and has a high energy expenditure compared to other organs. Insulin is produced by the pancreas after the intake of sugar and carbohydrates in general, so that the glucose in the circulation can be taken up by the cells and used as a source of energy or, if too much, stored in the form of fat. When you exaggerate with carbohydrates, a lot of insulin is produced, blood sugar drops quickly, the brain feels that it lacks the energy it needs and therefore hunger is triggered. For a diet to work, therefore, it must maintain relatively constant blood sugar and insulin levelswhich also contributes to the sense of satiety in the brain: even if the insulin in the circulation drops too much, for example because few carbohydrates are introduced, hunger increases.

Stress is welcome

Levels of stress and well-being also affect the chances of success of a diet: the cortisolthe hormone produced by the adrenal glands in response to stressleads for example to look for food, especially high in calories such as fats and sugarsand promotes the accumulation of fat. On the contrary the serotoninCalled the neurotransmitter of happiness, it promotes satiety and helps reduce the amount of food ingested, making you crave more protein instead of carbohydrates. When we are happy, therefore, we are less hungry; self the diet makes me sad, an irrepressible desire for carbohydrates appears which works against any possibility of losing weight. A large part of serotonin is produced in the intestine: the quality of the diet chosen is therefore important because it influences mood. Vegetables, for example, provide the right fiber to grow good intestinal bacteria and therefore have adequate serotonin production and a reduction in chronic inflammation, which helps in good mood, fights stress and reduces diet sadness.

Check dopamine

Like drugs or even sex, food stimulates the pleasure centers and increases the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter connected to gratification. Not taking into account the fact that eating must also be a pleasure can lead to the failure of any diet: depriving yourself of everything you like makes it impossible to follow dietary rules and above all involves withdrawal-like malaise which favors craving, the uncontrolled desire for something that makes you feel good. As a result we tend to eat more often junk foodas soon as possible, and this favors the appearance of so-called binge eating, compulsive binges: a risk which, moreover, increases with the number of attempts at a strict diet, because frustration increases and, at the same time, the inability to control the impulses that in search of forbidden pleasure.

June 14, 2023 (change June 14, 2023 | 09:04)

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